14959/Savage Lands: The Brood CHARGE

Savage Lands: The Brood CHARGE
Date of Scene:	27 May 2023
Location:	Savannah Grasslands
Synopsis:	The heroes in the Savage Lands join forces to push back a massive Brood King invasion force that attempted to storm the Lemurian Castle lands. SHIELD, Justice League, Avengers, and more combined forces to see to it the King of the Brood was felled.
Cast of Characters:	Diana Prince, Monet St. Croix, John Stewart, J'onn J'onzz, Phil Coulson, Alura In-Ze, Clea, Cassie Sandsmark, Audra Meridian

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Diana Prince has posed:
The Savage Lands have been a hot bed of dangerous activity for weeks now, ever since it had become known that a Brood infestation had started to spread throughout the local mega fauna, mega fauna including species of dinosaurs dating back to every known period of dinosaur history. The Savage Lands themselves have been getting poured over by super powered teams ever since, and now even SHIELD has an Outpost located in the central-eastern grasslands of the region. Additionally, a few world governments have finally become interested in the situation unfolding and have dispatched some military resources to aid in the fight, with actual troops on the ground now around the Lemurian Castle Lands in the center of the region itself.

But the largest force in the Jungle-filled lands is that of the Themysciran army, which has roughly 500 Amazon warriors located in a large campsite on the western side of the Lemurian Castle Lands. It is here that the women warriors of Themyscira have been providing aid to the locals being besieged by the infected Brood dinosaurs, sending out patrols of both Kanga, and Horse mounted infantry to perform patrols, and clean-up operations where the infected creatures have appeared.

It is on this late afternoon day in the hot and humid jungle lands, that a call had come in to the Castle Lands where the bulk of the amassing armed forces were establishing base camps that a Themysciran mounted patrol was under attack, not from the infected dinosaurs but from a large group of what would seem to be the BROOD themselves!

It had been rumored that the Brood themselves were rapidly evolving, in the recesses of the deepest parts of the jungle, and this Amazonian patrol had apparently been the first to make large contact with them, and were now in full retreat to try and get back to their rally point to be reinforced.

A force of roughly 50 Amazons mounted on horseback are riding at the top of their mounts speed, their hooves thumping heavily against the ground as a massive force of Parasitic bug creatures the size of large dogs pours out of the foliage of the jungle in their wake! The large bug-like creatures are hissing, spitting venomous globs of fluid at the fleeing Amazon warriors, and the further the Amazons get from the jungle, the more of these Brood Parasites come pouring out of the underbrush after them, what starts as a wave of 100, quickly becomes a thousand, and soon there-after the jungle itself starts to get pushed down, trees start to creak and fall apart, large flora coverings get shredded as a thousand Brood becomes two thousand, with no end in sight.

Diana sits atop her Kanga in the grass lands, watching from afar as the detachment of Amazons on horseback ride hard toward the grassy plains. Wonder Woman looks back over her armored shoulders to call out to her sisters, and all others who have gathered to help. "Get ready!" Her voice booms. "Weapons out! They are coming!" She commands, her sword being drawn from the sheath on the side of her armored Kanga's saddle!

And not a second later does the booming-thumping sounds of a combat helicopter rush over head as it flies out toward the pursued Amazons, the US Military chopper enroute to provide cover support with two more Apache-class choppers flanking its sides behind it!

Monet St. Croix has posed:
The Brood had been reassembling themselves. Going from a feral horde to an intelligent, focused one. Soon with thier numbers they would be unstoppable barring some sort of overwhelming adversary. And the Savage Land might not let Jean fully manifest the Phoenix. Or likely anything else that was possible that could truly exterminate them. No one had ever come up with a truly effective countermeasure to the Brood. They could ultimately adapt to whatever was thrown at them. Absorb, assimilate, and take whatever around them to make themselves stronger.
    They had to be held off, their numbers thinned enough that a counterattack could be made before they were overwhelming. Monet St. Croix is one of the fliers today. Acting as a spotter, and using her telepathy to relay commands from one group of Amazons and defenders to the other. There are far too many for her to keep track of in her head. The numbers far beyond what she could grasp - of comrades and teammates. if not friends.
    But she can coordinate with as many as she can. Sending information, messages, and relaying commands from one squad, one platoon to another. That was the best way she could assist the group as they started to deploy and move to engage!

John Stewart has posed:
John has only recently returned to Earth after being recalled by Oa to handle matters elsewhere in the galaxy, but it hasn't even been a week and his ring alerts him to one of his keywords he uses across the universe popping up on the Earth internet; Brood.

He had fought them once before, and thought they were gone after the war those years ago... still, that just means this became a priority.

A flash of bright green light alerts anyone above in the New York sky that John has apparently gone on the job again, and off he goes into the sky, through the atmosphere, and starts flying towards the Savage Lands...

By the time the Amazons are falling back, there's a small firey meteor in the sky... which quickly gives way to a green glow that briefly stops to assess the situation...

... only to start dropping maximum speed he can safely go, directly into the center of the horde, like a guided missile. His intention? To go BOOM in a crater, and buy time and confusion.

J'onn J'onzz has posed:
Much of the Martian Manhunter's (as the press were inclined to label him) involvement in the Brood incursion had been on a strategic level. Observing from high in orbit, he'd reached out telepathically for the endless buzzing of many thousands of minds working in unison. A hive mind. He'd not eaten nor slept, simply hanging suspended in orbit with his mind focused elsewhere.

When the call to battle was sounded was the first time he'd stirred in days. He'd descended to the Anarctic, his alien form shifting subtly to one more human-like and acceptable to his companions. A barely noticable speck from the sky, the first obvious sign of him is the feeling of his mind touching those of all present. Connecting them. Microsoft Teams eat your heart out.

<I am here.>

A streak of crimson light sears the landscape, emanating from his glowing read eyes. It cuts with the fine precision of a laser, leaving several of the parasites sundered and fidgeting on the ground as simple nervous systems struggle to come to terms with death.

Phil Coulson has posed:
While SHIELD has an established outpost, they have been uncharacteristically lenient with providing intelligence and materials. Usually they keep these things very close to their chest, but when one of teh Commanders is boots on the ground, they want the best possible weapons to provide the best possible response.

This includes some neat toys provided by one Reed Richards.

This includes several armed Quinjets.

This includes the cloaked Helicarrier hovering over unseen like an invisible Star Destroyer.

Phil Coulson, with a black nondescript bullet-proof vest replacing his usual suit coat, stands with a massive weapon laid up against his right shoulder. The Over-under barrel is connected to different colored cannister on either side of the chamber feed. One of them is a liquidic blue. The other is a even I don't know what this does red.

With a bandolier of odd looking thrown projectiles jingle-jangling against his chest.

A pair of slacks.

And shades, because it's bright out here.

"I am not a huge fan of bugs." He says to the SHIELD Strike Team acting as his Entourage. Each of them armed for a bug hunt.

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Superwoman swoops down from the sky at high speed. Her eyes burning red as she ravages the landscape, blasting up the ground and leaving behind walls of flame to force the advancing brood to funnel rather than flank. At the edge of the forest, watching the trees sway and move like the ocean waves, she can see endless hot signatures charging toward the defenses.

<<"Heads up">> Superwoman chimes in over the shared comms. She's glad to see channels are open and people are working together, <<"This is only going to get worse">> With a dash through the air she swoops down and scoops up, then tosses away, one of the brood creatures that got a little too close to the retreating amazons.

Much like Kara, the only military training Alura has ever had has been with the Amazons. She aligns herself more with them than anyone else on the planet - besides her family of course. She was not going to leave them out to dry in their moment of need.

Clea has posed:
Clea's representing the Avenger's today! Or well, that's what she'll tell folks if something goes wrong. Yes. The white haired woman is dressed for combat and she sees the quinjets that have arrived to. That leaves her to find the person in charge. Which luckily is Phil!

The Faltine flies that way, clearing a few bugs on her way over, "Commander." she greets from up in the air. "Just shout if you need anything!" she calls on her way back out to help deal with the bug infestation.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Joining the Amazons, less individually immortal and peerless, but greater in number, are regiments of Lemurian soldiers. The Lemurians, by and large, are a Medieval society, armed and armored as such, clad in shining steel and armed with sword and shield, spear and bow. Of course, descending from pre-cataclysm Atlanteans, they are not without their tricks and unusual artifacts. Nor are they without courage, filling out the Amazon troops with numbers they could never boast alone. Behind the Amazon Kanga cavalry, there are ranks of their own, the majority mounted upon thin, swift ostrich-like dinosaurs, although a small number on larger ones. There are several triceratops, bearing large howdas on their backs stocked with troops and a few of their siege weapons.

The Lemurians march under their monarch, Queen Leanne. Like Diana, she is a warrior royal, outfitted in breastplate and winged helm, armed with a sword and the light blue glow of the amulet that hangs beneath her throat. Her mount is a large bat-like creature that gives her aerial freedom to survey the field, and she is accompanied by an honor guard of avian humanoids, the so-called Aerians. It is their home, the Aerie Shalan, where the Brood hive has its center. And thus they too, like so many of the Savage Land, have much at stake in this fight. "For Old Atlantis, for the Aerie, for Lemuria!" she cries, soaring over her troops, and they cheer in response, before falling into motion behind the Amazons.

And amidst all of this, it is no surprise that Cassie Sandsmark will be found with the Amazon cavalry too, sitting near her mentor. For those that know her, her fondness for the Kangas has always been aparent. Though a young woman, she has rode them into war in situations like this before. And today, they are out not just to defend this place, but to avenge one of their own. "For Flyer!"

Audra Meridian has posed:
The issues with the network dampening powers had been dealt with. Essentially the main reason Audra had even gotten involved just because she had happened to be assisting the Justice League on the Desparo matter had been taken care of. But she wasn't one to run off when there was still greater tasks to be done.

That, and she was too much of a science nerd to not spend some time just oogling at living dinosaurs. Studying the climate and environment of the primordial lands.

All a long way of saying that she had been around the Lemurian Castle Lands when calls for trouble coming started coming up, provoking her to put aside the scientist hat for the time being and get her heroing gig. Which brings us to now, Windrose amongst the Amazonian warriors wait, and doing her very best to not geek out over it. Not to mention we have a different Green Lantern, a real live Martian, and then a few other people she's seen before. In the distance the Amazon patrol can be seen riding towards them, with alien creatures in pursuit. "I should of brought a bigger fly swatter..."

All the same when Wonder Woman gives the order to ready she activates her ionized vectors, stabilizer veniers unfolding open as she rises to hover just over the gathering group. Sooo many famous heroes here, but she needs to remain professional, focused. The mental link does get her to pause a moment, but it's just to check where it's from, mind links are no longer a weird new thing to her.

Her first move isn't an attack per say though. Windrose generates a bank of misty fog and sends it rolling forward, intending to pass over the incoming Amazonian patrol and descend upon the Brood behind them, similar to putting down a chilly version of a smokescreen. Give the patrol some cover and make it harder for the alien scum to see the attacks coming their way. Maybe also testing how their bug-like phisology reacts to the lower temperature. She may be clad in a super suit of weather manipulating technology but she is still a scientist at heart.

And scientists? Experiment. For the better of all, but experiment all the same.

Diana Prince has posed:
The three US Military 'Apaches' swoop in over the fleeing Amazon horse riders and instantly light up the jungle with their chin-mounted chain guns, leaving a deafening braying-sound of gunfire that peppers the Brood Parasites, absolutely shredding the bugs in to sprays of body parts, and bloody ichor that coats the edge of the jungle and grassy plains!

It's then that the Green Lantern arrives like a green asteroid, causing the Apache choppers to break off and split up, unsure of what just hit the ground near them, but the overall distraction was enough to give the Amazon riders more time to get away from their pursuers!

Then come the thunder of the rest of the super powered heroes arriving to help on this day. Diana looks up to the sky, then out across the plains to where the Lantern had arrived, that wasn't Hal, she knew it. "Welcome to the fight, Jonn and the Lantern Corps." She says over the mind link provided by the Martian Man.

With her sword drawn, and a look over to the SHIELD forces, then to her own, Diana points her sword ahead, and screams a shout of command, sending her four hundred and fifty Amazon riders toward the attacking Brood Parasites pouring out of the jungle.

And boy are their a lot of them, they're devastating the jungle, coming up out of the deep recesses of what is known as 'The Pit' where SHIELD had been conducting a number of deep archaeological expeditions... where the rumor of the evolving Brood had come from. Clearly they had been right.

But as the rest of the Amazon forces ride to meet up with their sisters, another 'buzzing' enters the battlefield, this one not from the cannons of the US Apache chopper weapons, but instead from another wave of Brood.

Flying Brood Parasites begin to tsunami-wave up out of the interior of the Pit and sweep in over their own ground forces. A massive pack of them swarm the initial Apache chopper that had been at the lead of the trio, and though many are cut to pieces amongst its whirling rotor blades, the overwhelming number of them begin to rip the American military helicopter to pieces, the pilots inside it crying out in anguish as their vehicle is sent hurtling down to the ground where it smashes in to rows of the Brood Parasites rushing the grasslands!

The Brood Flyers continue to swarm and rush the 'good guys' coming to help the Amazons.

Monet St. Croix has posed:
Lovely. The enemy has them on land and in air. And no matter how evenly the Amazons might match them on the ground, there's no way that those of them present that fly can handle that many in the air. Not when they're in the hundreds. That's at a level where the Kryptonians play at. Monet hesitates - logic clashing with stubbornness and wanting to fight. Logically, she's of little use against that many. Her stubborness won't let her stay out of a heavy fight and leave others to it.

If only SHIELD could have been bothered to setup some flak cannons. That would have made this all so much simpler. Ah well. Maybe the Hellicarrrier has them or something. But, Monet goes to split the middle as she moves to intercept the Brood that are charging towards the helicopters. The pilots are already being driven out - at this point she's too out of place but to try and catch any of the pilots that she can as they bail out or are consumed by the swarm.

Fighting insectoids in three dimension is different than fighting humanoids. Not all human fliers have the same set of instincts and awareness when operating in three dimensiosn. For the Brood that operate in space and gravity? It's a second nature. So the tricks one could do to avoid them and mess with them don't apply.

M can't read the minds of the Brood - they're too instinctive, too chaotic, and even without (seemingly) a Queen to coordinate them they're still too much in their own group meld to be broken apart. Maybe the Martian can? Monet tries to send a quick request to J'Onn to see if he can disrupt the Brood hyper-link, but it's probably not something that can be adapted to in the heat of battle.

Monet goes to rush through the fight to try and get towards the helicopters, towards three pilots bailing out.. One gets to his parachute, but is quickly grabbed by the Brood and dismembered. A second's head snaps over as his parachute jerks but in a messy way and his neck breaks. The third.. Doesn't jump far enough from it before they were skewred by shrapnel from it. Monet's yells go nowhere as she's jumepd by three of them while she's focused on flying.

Venomous stab in gut,s lash to back of the neck, acid in her eyes, blade dripped in ichor to her chest.

John Stewart has posed:
Yeah, it's the disciplined Lantern, aka Not Hal. <<John Stewart here. I'll keep this group busy. I saw the situation from afar, don't worry about shooting near me, I can take it. What's important is these things getting contained before they do real damage.>>

Indeed, a shield pops up around him inside of that crater, and John Wills into existence a Green minigun, which he promptly starts firing into the incoming hordes.

Anyone from above can easily see the storm of Oan energy at the center of the crater as John tears into the Brood... and occasionally the flyers, as John works to make his way /through/ the swarm to reach the helicopters.

J'onn J'onzz has posed:
J'onn himself is not a part of the comms network, instead pulling relevant details from the minds of those on the battlefield. He lacks any sort of technological raiment, preferring instead to rely on himself.

He has yet to land on the battlefield, instead remaining high where precision bursts of so-called 'Martian Vision' sear holes in the vanguard. As the flying creatures approach, however, he turns theit attention to them instead. One is sent hurtling to the ground by a swinging green fist, while another is caught by the throat as it hurls itself bodily into him and sends him tumbling through the air.

<A wise idea, Monet St. Croix,> J'onn replies through their mental link, <But there is a saying: 'If a lion spoke English, we would still not understand him.' These creatures are alien in their thought processes. Perhaps with time they could be understood ...>

Lower in the sky now, he turns his attention to that great and singular intelligence that unites the Brood.

<Perhaps, with focus ...>

He attemps to disrupt them. To throw his own consciousness against their own. If only to disrupt their uniformity for a moment.

Phil Coulson has posed:
While some of the younger agents assigned to Strike Force -Savage- are, understandably, shaken by the sight of a wave of Brood errupting from the jungle on legs and wings, Phil Coulson is not. He tilts his head forward, with wrinkles on his brow, to peer at this horde of alien parasites with an almost casual expression. "They're flying." He says to nobody, nodding slowly as if to say 'ofcourse they're flying', "Why wouldn't they fly?"

With the white haired Clea coming forward, the Commander gives her a nod and points out towards the horde. "See where they flying woman with laser-beam eyes just created a choke-point? Then you can create a magical barrier in the air to force those fliers into a concentrated central mass for easier targetting?" He asks of her, but he doesn't wait around to find out.

The weapon laid on his shoulder drops down with a quiet clap of metal on kevlar-glove palm. Walking out ahead of his strike-team to take up a defensive position. He'd probably give some motivational speech, encourage them to greatness by defending these grasslands as if it were home. He'd say something about the stand they make here will strike a blow at this parasitic enemy.

But Phil doesn't do speaches. Instead he speaks into the SHIELD linked communications to send the Quinjets that had been on standby into an attack pattern towards the central onslaught. <<"Weapons hot.">>

A trio of the Quinjets lance out in an inverted V attack formation, launching their specialized missiles at the main ground unit of Brood in rapid succession, Fox-fire One, go. Fox-fire one, go. The third opens up with an under-mounted high plasma cannon on a cylindrical rotating barrel.

<<"Could you do something about those flyers?">> Said to the command bridge of the Helicarrier, <<"Abso-frakin-lutely.">> The shimmering side of the massive mobile command ship uncloaks with rotating flak-guns wheeling out of brackets all along the side to light up the sky in anti-air defensive guns. The massive recoil sounding a lot like thunder, if thunder were a bunch of cyclic railguns.

"I really hate bugs."

Audra Meridian has posed:
Damn it all, here come ones that fly, and she already made the flyswatter crack. Maybe could say something about the waves getting uglier every time. But this is looking serious enough and horrible enough that the urge for making quips, at least intentionally, dulls a bit.

The Amazons are charging into battle, but even they could have issues with the sheer numbers descending from the skies to bolster the enemy siege. At the same time Windrose has to consider that she's got allies that can also be airborne. So need to be careful where she throws things out. Though if they can protect themselves like the Green Lantern does, might not be that huge of an issue.

"Try to keep them off the ground forces!" she suggests both aloud and over the mental network provided by the man of Mars. A few sparks arc about her as the trace lines in her suit light up. But it's not lightning coming just yet, because that would want to conduct towards the ground.

Instead she engages the projectors on her gauntlets as she points her arms forward and generators a whirling wind tunnel. A horizontal tornado if you want to think of it that way, blasting forward with the cycloninc air streams in an effort to literally blow the Brood Flyers back and break up their swarming formations!

Her main focus is to keep them from descending amass upon the ground forces, but those strong spinning winds are no joke, enough to shred and sling others around in the vortex.

Clea has posed:
Clea hears others in her head and for a moment...she thought she'd gone batty. <I'm Clea.> she introduces herself. <I'll try to take care of the fliers. If anyone needs an assist just let me know.> the white haired woman in purple tells them in the mind link.

Phil's request gets a dip of her head and then the woman is off to go start setting up what was suggested. She'd not thought of that and it was like shooting fish in a pond.

...or wait, no that's a barrel. Oops. The Sorceress Supreme of the Dark Dimension gets to work on the unmoving Bug-Nado!

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura's expression drops as the hoard of flying brood makes themselves known, "By Rao..." She knew this would be bad but the air superiority would end this battle far too quickly. That would not stand. She launches back up in to the sky and flies straight in to their mass.

Taking one to the stomach, she turns around and grabs another by the wing and tosses it in to a second of the flying brood. They start to crowd in to her, grabbing at her with their talons. One gets hold of her arm, another the second arm. They try to pull her arms apart but she claps them together striking the two brood creatures in to each other.

Flashes of her heat vision lance out through the air cutting through the brood flyers. In the thick of it now, there's nothing to do but push on forward and keep them away from their front line.

She erupts one of the brood in to flames, draws in a deep breath, and blows turning the dying monstrosity in to a flame thrower which she sweeps across the skies lighting them up en masse instead of one at a time. Still, she is only one woman and the battle field is vast.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
The Amazon and Lemurian cavalry rally, their cheers and warcries echo through the ranks, building to a heady furor even as their own riders flee the massive swarm, barely escaping under the sudden air support, with withers the Brood away in sickeningly abundant violence, only for more to fill the gaps. There is no time here to fear for their sisters, or to contemplate the carnage.. Only to steel themselves for what is to come. They wait only on Diana's command.

And then it comes. "CHARGE!" echoes Cassie.

Amazon Kanga are kin to their Australian cousins, but still quite their own beast. Much larger, they take the already considerably muscular physiques of their counterparts to extreme. They can jump vast distances, shatter bones with their kicks or tail. And the Amazon ones are armed and armored beside that, fitted with barding and even blades for their forelimbs.

The cavalry formation bounds ahead, building speed as they do. Behind them, the mounted Lemurians do the same, although they hold back a bit to keep behind the vanguard, as the Galimimus may be even swifter, though not so bulky as the Kanga. As they get closer, the riders lift their shields against volleys of corrosive venom. They block most of it, and bite back the pain where some splashes past, sizzles and burns.

And then they make contact.

The Amazon charge a true classical cavalry wedge, splitting through the Parasite formation, parting it like water. While it exposes them to danger, it immediately dulls the danger of their range attacks to the rest of the engagement, as the creatures must turn and face a closer threat. Astride every mount is a deadly and trained Amazon, their Themysciran spears and blades cleaving insectoid limbs or piecing between the plates of their chitin. They die in mass, although more come.

As Cassie herself frequently does, though she rides her own faithful Hoppa directly to the line of contact, cutting one creature in half with her sword as her mount rears up to kick another flying, she doesn't stay static in her saddle. A moment later, she leaps into the air, flying past the point of contact with the bugs. Many spit and shoot, but she's too fast a target. Mid-leap, she unfurls her lasso, which crackles with divine lightning as it extends to its full length.

And then she sweeps it through the creatures below like a whip, the lightning crackling, searing, causing many of the creatures to simply burst from the sudden, incredible heat, their gooey inards boiling.

It may all seem chaotic, even pointless, as the creatures continue to flood around them. But there is a strategy: All of this effort is to open a hole. Behind the Amazons, the Lemurians fill the void, their cavalry skirmishing at the edges as other soldiers rush to flood the space. One of the triceratops-mounted platforms lumbers into the gap.

Above them, Leanne shouts a word in a more ancient tongue, her amulet glows, and the riders on the beast work the device atop it. There's a flash of light, a pulse that sweeps outward, and many of the nearest parasites recoil. Further back, they fire another volley of spit: only to see it intercepted in the air by some some kind of shielding field. Science? Magic? In Atlantis, those things were near one and the same. And while the Lemurians remember little enough of that heritage, today, they bring one of the weapons of their forebears to the field.

Diana Prince has posed:
The Telepaths:

Something is off. Something is 'here' mentally, but not physically. Something is watching. It's a dreadful feeling. It's a sickening feeling, like the moment before you vomit. It is here, observing the battle, linked to the minds of all the creatures that flood the grasslands, that are being torn apart by the combatants here to save them. It's watching, judging how the heroes fight, taking note of their strengths, their weaknesses, and its reacting to it.

... and worse yet, something is coming. Something.... something worse.

To everyone else:

The battle rages, the heavy support to the air is having an effect on the Brood Flyers, causing their onslaught to have to split in different directions. The cannons from the SHIELD Helicarrier help save the remaining to US Apache choppers as they fly wing to wing back toward the bulk of the main forces, their rocket launchers lighting up to drop explosive payloads on to the Brood Parasites that are rushing toward the ground forces, sending up blooming clouds of exploding Brood body parts, charred and smoky.

But the Brood are so heavy in number, just pouring out of the depths of 'The Pit' sink hole within the heart of the jungle.

On the ground, Diana leads the charge, her sword striking through Parasite after Parasite, her Kanga leaping in to the air to use its absurdly powerful feet to bash through Parasite Soldiers that rush the Amazon Princess.

"Air Forces. Keep cover of one another, watch your flanks. Do not let them sneak up on---" Diana is cut off as she's forced to attack another wave of enemies rushing her position, her lasso coming in to play, it visibly lights up the ground fight with a glimmer of golden flowing rope that swirls around the conflict of chaos and destruction.

And if it wasn't enough that the earth itself seemed to be opened up within the jungle to let these creatures seemingly pour endlessly from within it, something else happens.

A rumble. An earthquake? That would check out, all this madness, why not suddenly have a 8.0 Richter Scale quake too. But no, it's not natural. Whatever causes this rumbling is not tectonic plates shifting. It's something else...

From within the edge of 'The Pit' where the creatures rush from, something massive starts to appear. It eclipses the edge of the cliffside, and it begins to rise up. Its chitin armored hull massive as it raises up with a wobbling gait to its motion. Up, and up, and up some more, the 'thing' rises.

The Telepaths will feel it, it's come for the blood of the heroes defending this land.

One massive spiked arm flies upward in to the sky, and comes slapping down on to the top of the cliffside to help this 'thing' rise up. Its huge spike-like foot pulling it further, and further up out of the canyon below... Its massive nest of glowing eyes appears, followed by a series of gigantic holes for a network of mouths. It rumbles out a moaning shout, that barfs a hot wave of disgusting wind across the grasslands!

The King of the Jungle seems to have arrived.

J'onn J'onzz has posed:
<Hello, Clea of the Faltine,> J'onn's voice intones inside the sorceress' head, <I apologize for the intrusion. I felt this would be more efficient than radio communications. I sense ->

Before the Martian can return his focus to the Brood neural-link, however, gouts of flame fill the sky. One of his purported allies seems to be unaware of his own particular discrepencies. Though the flames do not burn him, they are close by and he immediately freezes.

His eyes widen, the flames reflected in them as his telepathic link to the allied forces immediately drops out. His grip upon his own malleable form fails briefly, however, and he becomes almost like some form of plastic liquid that retracts in strands away from the flames and Alura; their source.

Retreat. Retreat. Retreat.

Phil Coulson has posed:
The combination of Clea's magical shield and the Helicarrier's cyclic spray of point defense flak guns is raining flyer bugs down from the sky. Ichor, bodies, little itty bitty chunks of bug body.. Phil's real glad he's not out there in that battlefield right now, getting covered in all that disgustingness. <<"Concentrate fire above the charging ground forces.">> The Commander says to the pit-crew and they directional fire controls shift. The guns are sensor mounted, firing at anything with an Brood Biology, but they can have their firing arc centralized towards a given area.

Every hundred projectile is a white glow tracer.

So the sky is a lancing meteor shower of cyclic death raining upon the flying Brood swarm. Doing it's level best to prevent those monsterous winged bugs from engaging with the Ground Forces. While the Trio of QuinJets do passes on the endless swarm of spitting, shooting ground bugs. Launching missiles into the biggest concentration for the greatest effect... unloading plasma as they worble over head under the skillful guiding hands of a crew of highly trained SHIELD pilots.

It's enough to warm Phil's heart.

Seeing all those dead bugs.

Until the ground beneath his feet begins to shake and he nearly stumbles... <<"What the hell was that?">> The sunglasses aren't your standard issue Ray Bans. They have telescopic augmented reality intergration and smart-link technology because SHIELD has some really impressive shit. His vision zooms in, but he doesn't to zoom very far to see the thing crawling out of the Pit.

Another clipped nod. "Don't you miss the days when the parasitic bugs spitting venom were normal sized?" He inquires solumnly. Reaching up to retrack the receiver on the top of his cannon of a gun. As if he's going to go out there and challenge it to a duel or something.

He doesn't, obviously.

He's battle hardened, not a moron.

Monet St. Croix has posed:
Monet can feel something wrong over. Something horribly, dreadfully wrong. Something that makes everything shake and quaver. The hair standing up on the back of her neck.. Even through the melee where she has two of the Brood on her, stingers laced with venom and toxins stabbed into her. One of her eyes is shut to protect it from acid. She flails desperately with a fist, being lucky to catch one of the Brood in a multi-eye. Even as she desperately swings about to grab it by a pincer, using it like a club to send the other two flying away from her. Something horrible is coming.

She can only send out a widespread alarm to the rest of the group as she picks up -whatever- it is coming towards them. The charge through the ground invasion seems to be holding on, the SHIELD Hellicarrier is in a position where it can give fire support and take some of the worst o fthe pressure away from them.. More Brood are coming. And it's not just them that she feels. She feels terror. From the ground itself. Is the Savage Land alive? Can it feel fear?

Then the ground shakes. The mountains tremble. The jungles thunder. The volcanos roar. The ground shudders and breaks apart. Then hte winds go to slam through teh air and she's buffeted about by them, barely able to keep herself aloft over as she looks at the huge, freakish thing.

It's the second biggest -thig- she has seen in her life. Compared to the World Devourers, those city-sized things which the Justice League fought off and she felt for the first time how miniscule she was. This thing is huge, beyond her capacity to calculate.. And seh shudders.

She forces it away. Even as she knows fear for justa few moments. THen hse goes to rapidly call to J'Onn. <<We have to stall it!>> To give the superheavies time to engage that monster. How does one stall such a huge thing mentally? She cannot generate the Phoenix. How does one scramble something so primal, so monstrous, so.

Wait. She's seen the files. That SHIELD has. That the Avengers have. That the X-Men have. On something monstrous,and innate, and freakish, and an abomination.. That is natural to Earth itself. Something that churns beneath the Pacific ocean, rising and formed from the birth of the atom rendering across existence.

<<Help me>> And she goes to try and work with J'Onn to give him the idea of what they could simulate telepathically.

She tries to focus it as she can. From the depths.. The sea bubbles. The ice surrounding the Arctic melts. The ground trembles. The edges of the Savage Land catch on fire. The water parts. Boiling. Something freakish. Something monstrous. Something OLD. Something ANCIENT. Something mutated.

Monet desperately sends a call to Clea, hoping that the ancient sorceress will bea ble to take what veiled image she is crafted and give it reality, to take a sigil of an illusion and to make it real - at least to teh goliath Brood King that they face.

To take something so hideous, so monstrous.. And to give it something even moreso. And so Monet hopes, that between the telepaths, the sorceress, and all else..

That they can have the Brood King face the true King of the Monsters.

GODZILLA!

Alura In-Ze has posed:
More acid is spit at Superwoman and it sizzles against her uniform. Made from advanced Kryptonian fabrics, yet still the acids eat away at it. Fists fly, kicks clash as she drags flying brood bugs in to each other and slices off wings and limbs alike with her heat vision.

She is favouring the sunny side of the battle - the shadow of the helicarrier does not help her much when she needs the sun to keep up the fight like this. Unlike her daughter and nephews, she hasn't lived on this Earth long enough to develop the deep reserves needed to go all day without aid.

The rumble hits her ears as that gigantic thing clambers up out of the Savage Lands and casts a shadow over the remainder of the battle field. Alura looks at it with abject horror at the damage it will bring to this world. "What in all that is science is that..."

She feels like but a spec against this 300 foot towering plated creature of destruction. And even as she stares at it one of the flying brood charges in to her. She spins and tosses it back where it came from. Big giant monster or not - the endless hoard persists.

Alura's eyes turn as she sees one of their fights seemingly fall - turning in to a plastic like liquid. Her mind seeks out answers as to how to help him and she delves back in to her memories sitting before the Fortress of Solitude's crystal computer. She recalls Kal's file on the Martian Manhunter. Ally. Brave beyond words. Also... fire bad.

Her eyes widen as she realises her mistake. "No.." and she draws in a deep breath and from it breaths out icy cold air. Hopefully just as bad for the brood but certainly to end the inferno she created. It's not enough. She flies to put her body in the way of any harm that might come to the Martian. This is her mistake and she must endure the consequences.

John Stewart has posed:
The flood of ground forces being stemmed isn't going to mean a thing if whatever /that/ is gets going.

John stops maintaining the minigun construct as he flies up, and heads right for the massive thing that just came out of the pit. Aiming his ring at it, he orders, "full analysis, biology, potential weaknesses." A green field of energy emits from his ring as the scan starts...

He's a sitting duck to be attacked there, but nothing for it if he wants to plan a strategy to deal with this development.

Audra Meridian has posed:
A wave of foul hot air blasts across the jungle battlefield. Even Windrose tumbles backwards a bit from the rush before her vectors restabilze her mid-air position. "That was not me!" she insists, not wanting any allies to want to get the wrong idea.

Not that it would be hard to confuse the source from the monstrousity that is rising to loom over the insane battle going on. She's hovering over the fight and she still has to tilt her head back to look up at the thing. Scanners in her goggles bleep and blip and just return a whole lot of errors because biology of that kind shouldn't be able to exist at that size... then again, what's the thing they said about insects being larger in prehistoric times? Still, this is taking it to an extreme.

"That is the biggest fucking cockroach I have ever seen." It's the best comparison Audra has. They are trying to infest the planet like roaches, after all. Then she notices the Green Lantern holding his position. She recognizes the effort in analysis, even if not the means. Hopefully his power ring can do better than her gear.

She engages her thrusters to maneuver closer to him, firing off blasts of compressed air that hit with concussive force at anything that tries to move in on John while he's doing his tactical scanning. "I got your back, Green."

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
After her first aerial sortie, Cassie loops back to rejoin Hoppa, careful not to leave him unattended in the enemy swarm. The Lemurians have raised their magic shield, giving the entire unit some extra protection as they prepare whatever weapons may follow, although now their mission changes. At first, they were to open a gap. But now? They must hold it. And holding a position is not the specialty of mounted forces.

Captain Eophi shouts orders in one position, Cassie in another, and in the moment where that sudden pulse has made their foes recoil, the Amazon and Lemurian riders wheel sharply and fall backward. It isn't a retreat: behind them, infantry rush forward beside the lumbering dinosaurs, moving to secure ground they've won. The Amazons form shield walls backed by the more plentiful Lemurian soulders in several ranks with long spears, a prickly classic Phalanx such that would make any Greek Hoplite jealous. It works well against the smaller Brood: as their volleys of spit are countered by the magic shield, they're forced to rush into melee, only to be met by a veritable wall of spearpoints. They can do nothing but impale themselves and press forward, trying to overwhelm the Amazons with the weight of their corpses.

... which, as it turns out, starts to happen.

"There's so many!" "They come without end!"

In the air above, Leanne and her birdperson companions skrimish with the fliers. Some fight with melee weapons, although a handful of the Aerians boast their own oddities of ancient technology. The X-men faced these energy rifles in less friendly times, but now, they are happy to use them air-to-air, shooting Brood from the sky. And by virtue of their lofty position, they're the first to see that creature. "By the makers..." murmurs Leanne.

Below, the Amazons struggle to hold the tide. The parasites just pile onto each other, until they can start climbing the bodies of their comrades and leap over the top of the Phalax. Several do, disrupting the lines, causing chaos as they land amidst the 'softer' Lemurian troops beyond the Amazon front line.

Cassie kicks into the air again, swooping to lasso one of them out from the middle of the formation. "We need to keep pushing, not just hold. Advance the tri-horns! We need to get the cannons near the big-one." That's what the Lemurians call them -- they don't have fancy science names for all these critters! Also, cannons?

The Lemurians shout, and the triceretops units advance again, lowering their heads to break into the pile of Brood - living and dead - like they were giant living bulldozers. It's pretty effective. Although now, the combat is more chaotic, as the lines break and the units mingle. Amazons fight alone and in pairs. Brood parasites surround and start climbing onto the tri-horns. Cassie herself zips between engagements, using her speed and her lasso's reach to try and be everywhere at once. But it's looking grim.

In the distance, a horn sounds.

And then, a few moments later, a huge ass rock comes flying to land in the midst of the parasite formation, crushing dozens.

Looking back, the sound of the horn is a new formation of apparent allies. They have the look of tribal, pre-agricultural humans, and they come on their own assortment of dino-mounts, and larger ones dragging weapons behind them, like that catapult. The Fall People. Shouting warcries, they rush to join the Amazon-Lemurian-Brood melee.

Clea has posed:
Clea's feeling for the Telepath's right now. She sees the huge...Kaiju? That's what Bruce called them in movie watching. So she was going with that! "Oh...that thing is huge..." she mutters to no one. And she gets smacked by one of the bugs as she's distracted. Her armor dented a bit from the blast.

She flies into the air higher, blasting bugs as she goes and she's looking for a way to dive bomb the King of the Jungle at the moment.

Diana Prince has posed:
Audra is likely buffetted by winds from being swept past on either side by the returning Apache attack helicopters. With the Brood Flyers being swept around by the various powered heroes, the US Military pilots were cleared to re-enter the fight by their commanding officer on the ground, and with that new enemy... the size of a skyscraper in-play now, the pilots of the two remaining Apache seem to have quite a target.

From beneath their wings, the chopper pilots begin to unleash Hellfire missiles that streak out across the sky, rapidly approaching the massive Brood King's series of opening-and-closing mouths! The missiles start slamming in to the beast, causing it to rumble, and rage, with armored sections of its body opening up, and lashing out toward the Apache choppers with two massive arms that just shoot out with surprising amounts of speed! The chopper on the east side is struck hard, instantly engulfed in a ball of flames, while the chopper on the left manages to dodge the attack, its pilots kicking to port and pulling up hard to veer off their attack!

The Green Lantern's scans of the Brood King come back, and essentially boil down to 'Fire and Bombs. Lots of fire and bombs.' It might even recommend something as big as a nuke to 'solve this problem', but such a tactic wouldn't be great for everyone else in the region...

The Brood King's second massive building-sized appendage slams down on to the ground, as the full form of its 300 foot tall body is now pulled up out of the interior of that deep hole within the jungle. It roars triumphantly as its huge talon-like legs pull it across the ground tearing apart the grasslands as it advances on the forces trying to halt its bretheren's claim of this territory.

A swarm of Brood Flyers congeal like a tornado that begins to shoot up in the air, headed for the SHIELD Helicarrier, the line of dark bug-aerial assault headed for that visible flank of the SHIELD vessel in the sky, likely raising alarms that incoming danger should ring out within the agency ship in the sky!

Down on the ground, Diana looks up to the Brood King, seeing it rip apart that US Attack Helicopter like IT was the bug here. She leans down to whisper something to Jumpa, and then leaves her mount behind. Standing on her mount's saddle, Diana leaps in to the air, streaking toward the head of the Brood King, with her lasso swirling in the air around her!

She lands on its head, burying her sword in to it, not for a 'kill' but just for stabilization to keep her rooted and booted to the massive creature's armored dome!

She's fought colossai before...

Monet St. Croix has posed:
This is well beyond her telepathic abilities. And on the Brood.. Something so unnatural and alien that she cannot even read their minds at all, or even understand how they communicate. So M isn't in a state to see if her gambit of trying to distract it/them/they for more than a few seconds with scans of someone else's files and imagery does anything. At this point the girl is mentally leaking like an open gas line as she's threatened with telepathic overload. IT's very, very good that around her there is nothing over but the Brood as Monet's body plummets on towards the ground in what is an instinctive emergency shut down to prevent her from being overwhelmed and having her brain fry her.

So what's a massive seizure is her mind acting as a circuit breaker before the worst of the backlash hits her. It does work as an emergency shut off fo rher consciousness. Just it has her plummeting down hard towards the ground..

In the middle of whatever groun d based Brood there are in the area as her illusion is well, well past the point of being completely gone now. And in the fire, earthquakes, barrages, and kaiju.. Might as well be beyond the sense of awareness at all.

J'onn J'onzz has posed:
Even in his fearful state, J'onn seems to have the presence of mind to avoid his enemies. More or less a pseudopod of green 'substance', he wheels and twists through the air as he avoids the flyers. Retreating, ascending skyward and away from where the fire was even though it has been extinguished.

Monet will meet nothing but silence when she reaches out to him telepathically, his connection with those around him dropped almost as quickly as it was raised. He coalesces into something like a floating sphere with a reflective, green surface suspended above the madding crowd. Intangible as one of the ravening flyers simply flies through it as though it weren't there.

John Stewart has posed:
Right. This was going to hurt on both ends.

<<Fire and bombs. Lots of it. I'm going to help to keep it busy.>> He gives a small nod of acknowledgement to Audra briefly, before he starts flying around the monster, right hand out as if wielding a sword, and into his hand is Willed a literal fire chainsaw.

Time to bring it down a size or two. Literally.

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura lets the brood tumble upon her in the air, their weight trying to push her down but she maintains her height as she flies against it. J'onn has made his retreat. She has to push down the growing concern for him as she begins to grapple and cut her way through the brood flyers that have entangled themselves with her. Gnashing teeth biting against her skin but finding no purchase.

She bursts free of them and thrusts out two fists before her, flying with haste towards the behemoth. Her eyes burn bright as she aims for one of those big tentacles, attempting to slice through it, or cut in enough that she can grapple with it and pull it free of the beast.

<<"Does anyone have a plan of attack for something this.. big?">> Alura calls out over the comms. She is buffeted by a flyer and one of the ear pieces drops out leaving her with mono comms only in the other ear.

Phil Coulson has posed:
"Incoming flyers headed our way, keep them off our flanks!" The Deck Chief in command of the Helicarrier receives the warning from the sensor suite and the point defense guns shift out of their concentrated fire mode into their designed purpose: Keeping enemy fighters at bay. There are a lot of guns on this ship, but it's designed for enemy combatants that lack swarming numbers. So while they're putting a dent into the torpedo of bugs coming up towards them, there's so many more following the rain of broken bodies and torn wings.

Smaller, manned, guns along the deck swivel into attack positions as Agents begin firing at the creatures swooping in at the deck crews, littering the whole surface with corpses. With a flight of Quinjets launching to provide more fire-power in defense of the mobile battle-platform. Three launch and begin doing gun-runs, lighting up the fliers, but a third is swarmed before it's VTOL hover-engines are in flight position. Claws tear at the hull, scratch at the glass, and climb in through the open flank of the Quinjet to get at the meaty portion inside: The Agents.

The jet lifts off the deck, but it only gets as far as a few dozen feet before smoke begins to bellow out right VTOL, spinning it out wide under the last ditch effort of the pilot so that it doesn't connect with the command platform. The jet tumbles down towards the ground far below, and while he's trying to aim for a group of bugs? There's just as likely a chance it lands amongst the allied forces as well.

Phil glances skyward with a little frown. <<"Initiate the device.">> He says to the Deck Chief, who acknowledges and turns to one of his command staff at a specialized terminal recently installed by Reed Richards under close SHIELD instruction. "Do it." He says and the engineer hits the trigger mechanism.

The amount of power this thing draws makes it impractical for long engagements and renders all other systems innert while it's activated, but the entire Helicarrier is suddenly engulfed in a bright blue dome.

It creates a Force Field, within which, Brood DNA is rapidly deteroriated. At the molecular level. The flyers inside the dome begin to rot and fall apart, raining thick chunks of melting carapice upon the deck, with a pair of Quinjets hovering with their side doors opened to present the internal mounted chainguns for anything else.

The effect is instant. The results are grusome. The carnage is very real.

Phil watches... then steps back as a glob of use to be Brood goo splats a couple dozen feet from where he was standing. "That was incredibly disgusting."

As for the call from Alura, <<"As a matter of fact I do. But I need someone to drop one of these grenades in it's mouth. I'd explain what it does, but I honestly don't know. All I know is Reed says it will science them... he used more elegant words, but I take it to mean, they'll die. So...">> He unhooks one of the massive grenades on the bandolier and holds it up, <<"Any takers?">>

Audra Meridian has posed:
The helicopters cause the air movement around her to shift as they pass, but knowing they were there in the fight made it easier to stabilize herself for it. As for the power ring's analysis... Fire and bombs. Wonderful. Neither are things Audra really packs on a regular basis.

She does take a moment to appreciate John making a chainsaw. Then making it on fire. "Okay that's pretty darn cool... err hot." Someone knows how to use the ability to make whatever they can think of real.

She doesn't have such a power, but it doesn't mean she can't get inventive. And being as large as it is, in contact with the ground, targeting the Brood King won't be an issue like it might of been with the smaller swarms. <<"We can still light this thing up!">> Ionizing air sparkles around her as Audra clenches one gauntlet into a fist and points it. An impressive sized bolt of lightning bursts from it to crackle at the Brood King, it's forks and branches dancing along the armored carapice as it seeks a way to conduct through the body.

Audra doesn't have fire directly. What she does have is the fact that lightning actually produces an extensive amount of heat energy as well. Enough to set forests and flesh on fire if it conducts through it.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Leanne's aerial duel quickly faces the same overwhelming numbers as her people have faced on the ground. In the face of them, she turns and dives, with her Aerian escort in pursuit. Another 'retreat.' In this case, however, it is not a maneuver to make room for other troops, but a simple exploitation of the simple intelligence of her foes: she leads them on a chase, lower and lower...

...down toward the bulk her troops, where numerous archers wait in reserve. Till now, they have been of little use, as the parasites are too armored for them and threatened by their spit, but against the flyers? Their wings provide a vulnerability. "Loose!"

The sky fills with arrows, and many of the flyers fall.

At the bloody front below, things have stabilized. The triceratops are all abreast now, marching with Amazon infantry who clear away any parasites that try and climb atop them. They're joined on one flank by the Fall People warchief Chomak, who rides a Ceratosaurus - basically a smaller t-rex looking thing with horns, as if that was necessary - fighting with violence and gusto.

The whole formation advances with purpose, slowly pushing through the chaos and toward that towering behemoth.

Cassie, on the other hand, sees her mentor fly off, and takes her cue to do the same, sending Hoppa back toward the re-organizing cavalry. Her flight is swift, and sends her hurtling out through the sky toward the top of the creature.

"Well, not the first time we've done this, but I really don't want to let this one eat me," she tells Diana, as she lands nearby. "So, you got any OTHER ideas?"

To this point, she's had a battle plan to execute, so she hasn't had to interface much with the telepathic chatter. But there's no playbook here. <<"Dunno,">> she echoes back at Alura. <<"The Lemurians have like, ancient Atlantean cannons on those dinos, they're trying to bring them into range. But I have no idea if they'll even tickle this thing.">>

And then, somehow, another set of thoughts joins them. They're... somewhat disturbing, like a dark echo at the edge of the telepathic link. Uninvited, but there all the same. <<"Weeee will assist you, as you may need.">>

This time, reinforcements don't come from the ally side, but seemingly from behind the Brood. At first, they could be mistaken for another cloud of fliers, but as they come closer, it's clear that they're both of a different shape and not so numouers. A group of pteradon-like humanoids, with a particularly, uh, handomse specimen of their dino-man kind at their lead.

Clea has posed:
Clea's seeing that the ground forces are in a bit of strife and the Faltine decides to land on the ground and starts to call on magics to start ripping the enemy forces off the ground and squishing them back into it with extreme force.

It was messy and violent, but it was getting the job done to start giving the ground troops a bit of a relief and room to actually advance.

Diana Prince has posed:
From atop the massive Brood King, Diana keeps herself standing with her sword inside its armor. She faces no danger up here immediately as she is joined by Cassie. Her eyes are down on the battlefield watching what is taking place, observing it and building a plan.

Over the connection and comms, Diana speaks. "John. Windros. Focus your attacks on the massive Brood's appendages. Its legs. Keep them from advancing the creature forward, keep them from striking out at our peoples." Wonder Woman states...

And as she states that one of those huge appendages strikes at that last remaining Apache chopper which narrowly avoids it, sweeping its body around the huge leg, and coming up to launch another Hellfire missile at the Brood King. The missile twirls through the air, and impacts against the creature's face, beside that cluter of eyes on the right side, all of which seem to close to shield themselves from the explosive power of the Hellfire missile.

A wave of Brood Flyers go after the Apache aircraft as it kicks in its thrusters and starts on a fleeing course around the back of the massive Brood King, the pilots in that chopper really earning their paycheck today!

"Defend our people by removing its legs." Diana says just as Stewart does so with his flaming chainsaw! "Keep them occupied and unable to defend the main mass of the Brood tower creature." Diana further says.

Her eyes go to Cassie then, and she pulls out her lasso to grab on to the armor across the King's scalp. She tightens the divine length of twine, and begins to fly up in to the air. "Cassie..." Diana says through gritted teeth as she starts to pull on the King's armored head. "When I expose it, dig in to its scalp with your weapons! Whatever it takes to send pain in to it. We need its mouth open for the others."

Diana starts ripping upward, the muscles in her biceps flexing as she tears with the golden lasso of Hestia until a cracking sound echoes off the head of the massive Skyscraper Brood King. Wonder Woman tears, rips, and pulls, until she just forcefully removes a massive slice of its armored head, exposing much more sensitive under flesh beneath it, chunks of the armored hide falling to the jungle floor below!

The Brood King howls, its uncountable amount of mouths widening open as untold amounts of pain surge through its body from its injured scalp, Brood Flyers now advancing upward toward the Wonder Women atop its dome high in the sky!

Monet St. Croix has posed:
Where is M? In a puddle on the ground having a spasm. Her body convulses over in a seizure - the fact that her mind has gone into a phase of emergency shutdown is mostly what's preventing it from lashing over the area. SHe's twitching on the ground a few times, right as the ground Brood - what few there are in th earea at least.. Are upon her. A claw slashes into her. Acid bubbles over her. Ichor drains into her. If she couldn't move then she would simply be the latest one that is absorbed and taken as a new infection. Even as the ooze and ichor dribbles down her body, she trembles. There is precious little in her consciousness left even as brain shutdown gives into a sense of primal fear as a massive earthquake goes along from the heroes fighting the huge Brood King. A sort of 'fight or die' response to her as the part of her mind that had shut down is thus shut down for self preservation.

There is little more to her than an almost feral thing - an irony compared to what she fights. Her hand flails about and thrashes, and her mind goes on autopilot. The logic centers of her mind calculate as if they were a separate entity to the rest of her as it thinks of how to best rouse her from her state if cataonia when consumption by aliens itself is not enough to do so.

The part o fher that is permanently clinical, detatched, and that she loathes more than anything else for how it can shut down takes a few micro-seconds to figure out how to trigger something beyond fear, beyond hate. To simply force her misfiring synapse and random neuron patterns to backfire.

It is the face of Marius. It is her sisters over locked in their own tomb as she was. It is the sensation of that rage, that loathing, that hate that keeps her functional even as seh bottles it up and uses it to make a shield about herself. All that fear and isolation and loathing is thusly channeled into her body as her mental persona shatters in the way that the functional part of her mind that acts upon logic decides is the best way to save her life.

She can have recriminations after and all that will entail. She has to survive to then. All that happens is those barriers in her mind shut down, and she sees the face of her brother devouring her, devouring her sistesr, feeding upon her mother.. THere is fury.

Then there are Brood bodies about her as acid bubbles about her. She wakes up for a moment, unsure as to where she is, or what is going on. And the part that has driven her feral to keep her alive shuts down as she is back to normal.

Back to her collapse.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Sauron - Dr. Karl Lykos - has actually been working with SHIELD. He was in jail, and they let him out to help save his girlfriend from turning into the first Brood Queen. Long story. But now everyone's friends! Give or take. The important thing is, that Sauron is here to help.

As it the girlfriend, for that matter. She's aboard the helicarrier.

Atop the critter, Cassie has a job to do, so she gets to it. "You got it. I'm well-armed for 'pure pain." She starts uncoiling her lasso, and then loops it around her sword. "Because I'm still really mad about Flyer."

With the sword connected, she steps forward, and rams it deep into that opening Di made. And then she whispers a little prayer. One that Diana is gonna pretend she didn't hear, despite the super hearing.

A moment later, the lightning lights up, and something fierce, the pure wrath of the gods of Olympus pouring through the golden cord. "Take this, you ugly cockroach-looking mother-"

This moment of intense electrocution is threatened to be interrupted as the fliers sweep in to try and dislodge Diana and Cassie from their task, yet as they approach, they're met in the air by Leanne and her Aerians from one direction and by Sauron and the Pterons from the other!

On the ground, the advancing line of triceratops halts. They've lost one, along the way, and the others show numerous wounds and scars, but they've arrived. <<"In position,">> thinks Eophi, still in command below.

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Superwoman relieves herself of flailing giant monster limb duty as she turns around and flies up to Phil. Landing before him she looks at the grenades and asks, "I got you. Only one? Reed has never let me down so far." She gives him a quick smile, "Nice to meet you, Man with a Plan." She has no idea who Phil Coulson is - yet.

Accepting the whole bandoleer she gives him another smile and looks back at the beast. This will require some good timing with Wonder Woman's attack. The surface beneath her rumbles just a little as she builds up flight speed before launching.

"Here goes nothing..." And then she is away, zooming through the sky. This time she is dodging and weaving through the brood flyers because time is of the essence.

It's a matter of timing and as Cassie brings the pain, so does Alura bring the bombs. Or.. sciencey things, whatever they are. Thank Phil for such an apt description of Reed's technological marvel. She might have to send Reed a message later to find out what these things were.

"If only Kal could see me now. He loves football references...." She says as she hovers over the gaping pained maw of this gigantic monstrosity. Super smell is not a helpful super power right now so she holds her breath and lobs the four 'special pills' in to its gullet.

Fearful the monster might have some sort of gag reflex, she flies up under its chin and pushes up in an effort to try and force its mouth closed again. "Take your medicine big guy..." Her back pressed against him as she strains against the skyscraper behemoth's mass.

Clea has posed:
Clea's helping out with the ground units still, but given fire is the thing that will hurt the big guy the most the woman starts to funnel some of that energy that is herself into a spells that will bring down fire on the thing.

She's just trying to aid people, she's not taking that thing down by herself and Alura looks like she's trying to feed him bombs! Which is very nice of her!

Phil Coulson has posed:
The Helicarrier, temporarily flying on emergency power, hovers inside that shimmering blue sphere. But there's no way they can keep it up for any extended period and it begins to dim, then flicker, and finally disappear completely as power is reroute back to other systems. The SHIELD Communications were down, but they're flickering back online as the massive reactors begin to recharge the batteries. <<"-Son. Ef-.. S- -on-e... Can you rea- us.">> Phil waits, watches, and holds up the grenades for Alura. The whole bandolier infact. He isn't really sure what they do, but he's fairly well sure it wasn't designed for anything that massive.

So he's not going to skimp, "Ehhh you better take them all.. go big or go home, right?" Casual. Once the payload is retrieved and she's off to deliver, the Commander keys up his comms, <<"Take a breath, systems are coming back online, try not to tell me what you had for dinner until the board is green.">> While the Carrier is, at least for now, remanded to defense by Quinjet, it wont take long for it to become opporational again.

Which is when the grenades are dropped, right into the King's mouth. The explosion is pretty unassuming, as far as bombs go, but the effect is... interesting? That's one word. The blue material inside attacks the Behemoth at the cellular level. Causing a cascade of holes to open up like cancerous growths against the exterior carapice. The boils grow, pop, and spray ichor out across the battlefield.. But the King isn't a common street Bug and as rapidly as the bioweapon is manipulating it's DNA, the creature is mutating to combat it.

Some of the ulcers begin to close, forming thicker armored segments as it, not only adapts to the weapon, but manipulates its properties to strengthen itself. Suffice that it's creating a nice network of openings to attack, but those openings to attack are going to rapidly close because Brood are gonna Brood.

"I really hate bugs..."

Audra Meridian has posed:
<<"Go for the limbs. Strong strategy. On it!">> Audra banks away from John and his chainsaw, veering for the opposite side of the monsterous sized Brood. There's a lot of this guy, they're going to need to approach the matter from more than one angle to get it done. Literally and figuratively. At least they're getting lots of support, some from unexpected sources too.

Okay. Electrical burns from lightning was effective, but it takes focused channeling into one specific spot. Need to speed it up a bit. More force at once... what can she do that is approximate to some manner of bomb or explosio -- wait, that's it!

She holds up both hands, conduits pulsing brightly and sparks arcing between her fingers like the crackles up a jacob's ladder, drawing additional arcs as power is channel from her power packs into her gauntlets. But as the electricity and ionized air pulse between her hands it builds together, taking a vaguely spheroid sparkling form, steadly increasing in size. It's generating enough energy and heat through electricity that it's starting to superimpose into a volatile plasma-like state.

Thunderballs are a phenomenon not entirely understood by science. Some even claim they don't really exist, or at least as a seperate from from standard lightning. But Audra has seen them in the storms she's chased, and what their force can do. She knows enough of the principles involved in the matter, most which boil down to a lot of energy releasing really fast to create intense heat in a similar manner as an explosive but through natural elemental forces.

And she kamehamas that mad science at one of the Brood King's massive limbs!

John Stewart has posed:
He was already doing that, so keeping on keeping on seems like a great idea! John doesn't waste any time in switching it up to the arms with that chainsaw. Once the horde is coming back this way, a few swipes are sent in that direction.... and then, the thing starts being torn apart at a molecular level, that chainsaw happily starts working on making the bomb holes bigger.

Diana Prince has posed:
To make a situation like this something that can be overcome, it requires a massive amount of team work, as they say it has an effect on making the dream work. Such is the case with the efforts of the Green Lantern expertly working his way around the battle at the base of the Brood King, using his green chainsaw of flame to saw through one of the crane-sized legs on the beast, one of its forward facing shielding appendages, and the same goes for Audra. Her powerful electrical attacks will sever the other fore-leg on the creature King, should she keep it up long enough, and this entirely leaves the beast open to forward attacks, specifically giving Alura time to get in and drop those bombs in to the King's many opening maws!

It's a sight to behold, if anyone had time to actually sit back and watch, but just about everyone on the battlefield has some task to be tending to. Case in point, the US Military ground soldiers are being overrun by the Brood Parasites, to the point where some of their big ground machine guns are now without gunners manning them...

Until Captain Eophi, and a detachment of Amazons appear at the front of the US Army's camp, and rapidly move to 'man' the guns. As it so happened, Themysciran forces had trained in these weapons this week... partly for inter-group mingling, partly for necessity, and partly for ... well... they just looked fun.

Now, five of these belt-fed machine guns are opening up on the Brood Parasites now being fired by Themysciran warrior women, who shout arguably in a maniacally excited fashion as they send hot metal rounds in to the onslaught of Parasite soldiers trying to overrun the Army's camp!

When the Brood King's inards are exposed by the explosive results of Reed and Phil's bio-grenades, the commander of the Atlantean ground cannons witnesses this, and thrusts his hand forward toward the King's body in the far off distance.

"Fire!" The order is given, and what follows are a series of bright blue blasts that light up the entire battlefield.

The sun was setting this evening, but the lights from the Atlantean plasma cannons send blasts of bright cyan energy across the entire spread of warriors clashing with bugs upon the ground!

And once more that last Apache helicopter comes soaring in between Audra and John's opening of the King's forward defenses to launch two more Hellfire missiles that soar toward the King's opened carapace, and slam inside its interior guts, the combined offensive attacks doing untold amounts of damage to the Brood King who is wavering like the skyscraper about to topple over in a windstorm.

It's working... but it takes a LOT!

Monet St. Croix has posed:
Monet is.. Not sure where she is. Physically? If she were coherent enough she could give an approximate location if enough of her senses would cooperate. Mentally? Mentally she could not tell what planetary body or plane of existence she's on. She's disoriented enough it takes focus to tell that she's on the ground or under the effects of gravity.

She's still partially conscious, even as bits of rended up Brood are around her, and she can't help but just look at. . Them? It? HEr?

She goes to force herself up. Hand not moving. Right leg going forwards. Up above, an alien kaiju the size of a skyscraper fights the amazons, fights SHIELD, fights the heroes. Monet is barely aware of it. Even as she tries to draw her other leg up towards her. It doesn't quite cooperate even as she moves to try and take her other arm up. This one moves as she instructs it.

Her hand settles on something for support. The nearest Brood carcass. Getting more acid on it.

John Stewart has posed:
Once the internal guts are opened up, John goes right in for the finish. There's no hesitation from the reckless Green Lantern as he dives in, applying chainsaw to Brood skyscraper thing in an effort to 'MAKE IT STOP'.

Phil Coulson has posed:
It is high time the Roughnecks got a little bit of action! While the defensive forces were keeping the Brood from advancing too far back to where Phil was acting more as a Commander on the field, rather than an active combatant, there are just so many of them.. It's impossible to keep the tide at bay forever... with their weapons trained, they unleash a barrage of energy blasts from their heavy weaponry upon the bugs, tearing into them as they throw themselves heedlessly at the SHIELD Agents for little concern for their own well-being.

Even Phil, who was watching the effect of the Grenade, is drawn into the fray, whipping the massive blaster weapon up into the curve of his shoulder to unleash a stream of wooping energy blasts at one of the big monsterous Brood warriors, while the remaining Quinjets add their combined firepower to the rest of the assault force aimmed at the King Bug. Hitting it in exposed sections where armor has been melted away, then circling out to make room once their payload is delivered for another.

While one stays above the SHIELD agents on the ground to provide air support against any remaining flyers. One of the Roughnecks is grabbed and thrown backwards into the horde, with Phil stepping up with his Agents to fill the gap of firepower.

The Helicarrier finally comes back online enough to deliver a series of missile strikes to cut off the Brood charge on Phil's position, explosions and gore, and lots of combined arms fire! He may have looked really cool with his button up white shirt, sleeves rolled up, tie, and bullet proof vest, but now he's going to be covered in Brood guts. Smashing the butt of his weapon against the side of one of the insects head to crack the armor, he grabs his pistol off his hip and unloads the clipt right into the exposed meaty part.

With a jerk of his hand, he racks the rifle, holsters his pistol, and brings it back up to lead the Strike team forward with the other assault groups.

Audra Meridian has posed:
Audra Meridian keeps it up, but the explosion of lightning takes up most of her stored electrical charge. But the team effort was working. Numbers were thinning, the Brood King has a huge open wound they can now exploit.

Quickly she recalibrates her gear. Now that there is more vulnerable portions exposed we can get a little more creative.

She zigs and zags in the air to avoid the behemoth's staggering motions, getting herself lined up with the huge exposed openings. "How does that one video game go?" She raises an arm, now hissing with frosty mist instead of electricity. "Oh right -- Shoot the Core!" She fires what would be her 'scattergun' equivilent of hailstones and ice crystals into the exposed monster biology.

It doesn't look like much. At first. But the crystallized ice continues to draws moisture to itself, now from the soft flesh its imbedded in as well as the air, to crystallize farther. Audra adds to it herself, with more bursts of cold air and additional hailstones.

What started as small shards expand, producing sharp barbs of ice that dig farther into the flesh, tearing and pushing it apart as they freeze and grow.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
In the air above the King, Leanne slashes with her sword, maneuvering her own giant batlike mount (one wonders if its species wasn't the basis of the Brood flyers, given the similarities), amulet glowing brighter than ever. But as always, the Brood are everywhere. The Aerians weave and maneuver, trying to keep at distance with their rifles, but quickly, are separated from the Queen. And then one of the flyers swoops in behind her, its talons ripping the woman from her saddle.

Twisting in its grip, she thrusts upward with her blade, piercing its underside. It dies.

But then they both begin to fall, the Queen still held in its clutches...

"Weee have you." It is Sauron who makes the catch, ripping the limb that grips her free and tossing the dead Brood aside. "Now, let us wiiiitness the fall of this abhorent beast! Personally, We would have used theragnostic nanoparticles but SHIELD's weapon worked... well enough."

The Lemurian crews manning the ancient machines strike true. The weapons themselves are not easy to aim; lacking their original mountings, they must be adjusted by hand, with heavy cranks and levers. But they... couldn't really ask for a bigger target, and a cry goes up, as those blue lances of light pierce into the thing's massive body.

Cassie keeps the voltage on until, well, her rage has fully exhausted itself. She's left panting, almost in a daze, until she feels the whole creature shift underneath them as all that weight starts to tip over. She yanks back, pulling her sword-lasso loose with a wet sound, and looks to Diana. "Time to get off this ride, I think."

Diana Prince has posed:
The barrage of fire being put in to those exposed weaknesses on the Brood King is a sight to behold, the kind of sight that everyone here who is able to witness it likely won't ever forget. The cannon fire from the Atlantean weapons, the traditional gunfire from the US Army, the air to ground strikes from the SHIELD Helicarrier, and everything else being brought to bare upon the King itself by the heroically powered individuals.

Cassie's comment to Diana is met with a single nod as the Princess touches down upon armored boots beside her sidekick. "Let us go then. Do as I do." She tells her sister before she turns around to face the back of the creature's massive domed head, then lunges herself up in to the air in a graceful backflip that sends her out, and descending down toward where all the focused fire is being sent in to the damaged Mega Beast.

Diana stops, stares in to one of the exposed holes, and calls in to her comms. "Abandon attacks, it is time to send it back to where it came."

With that said, Wonder Woman raises her armored forearms, and slams her bracers of submission together. The resulting blast, hopefully timed with that of Cassie's own Aegis attack, sends a wave of kinetic energy right in to the eyes of the creature, right in to one of the topmost holes created by the bio-explosives!

The power of the Gods themselves is sent right in to the face of the massive Brood King, and with one last gasp of putrid breath from its many mouths, the huge beast begins to tople. It begins to fall backward, it begins to tip, and drop back toward the opening of 'The Pit' section of the Savage Lands jungle. The gigantic Brood King falls, dragging with it what is left of its appendages, wwhich scrape across the grasslands, pulling massive waves of biomass with it in the form of Brood Parasites that had been clustered around the King's base. It all slides back down in to that massive crater in the jungle, taking with it a huge chunk of land too, as a crevace is carved out of the earth, tearing open the ground itself a good half mile away from the cliff's edge in to the pit itself.

Across the battlefield, what is left of the Brood Parasites, and the Brood Flyers break off, their marching orders cleared changed. They scatter back toward the jungle, with some armed forces still firing at them, including the Amazon warriors on their mounted gun emplacements, tearing apart more of the Brood soldiers that flee from the grasslands.

The Apache chopper left in the sky drops down to send another braying burst of chain gun fire at the fleeing Brood Flyers, cutting a swath of them down that were about to drop back in to the pit crater to chase after their fallen King.

And over the land itself, a strange silence begins to spread, begins to grow, as attacks begin to cease, and a realization of what just happened starts to settle in amongst all gathered here-in.

Phil Coulson has posed:
Standing atop a hill comprised entirely of the corpses of Brood. One foot raised upon the cracked, crooked skull of one of the many fallen bugs. Phil, covered in ichor, holding his weapon aloft with the butt braced against his right hip. The Roughnecks have taken up positions with their own weapons circled out to defend the Commander. The Commander who, in the heat of combat, has had his bullet proof vest torn off and his button up undone. Hanging open at the top, yet still tucked into the waist of his slacks, the heroic Phil Coulson stands, glasses on the bridge of his nose, hair slicked back.

Proudly displaying the Captain America T-Shirt he wears beneath.

"Someone help me down from here.." He says with a grunt to one of his Agents. "Seriously, it's high, I don't do heights."